Three years ago, we learned that a Dutch team had developed a biological concrete that could repair its own cracks . They said it might be two or three years before it found its way into the larger world—and now, we’re getting a look at its real-world applications.
If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14
Those of us who have been self-employed for a number of years sometimes joke that we are now unemployable. We’re used to being king of our own castle. We make our own rules. After having that autonomy, returning to a workplace and the need to comply with company process would be hard.
Not everyone gets on with self-employment. It requires discipline, consistency, and the ability to self-manage. You have to do this for yourself; it all stops with you. As someone who has always sweated the small stuff, it suits me. I’m a planner, an organizer, I work hard and get stuff done. I like being king of my own castle, because I can get more stuff done without anyone else knocking my carefully laid plans off course. Much of this is baked into who I am, but I’ve taken a step back recently and realized that often I cross from staying organized and being reliable into making unreasonable demands—mostly of myself, but sometimes of other people. Anyone close to me has at one time or another had the misfortune of getting in the way of a Rachel-shaped steamroller fixated on Getting Stuff Done.
I have found myself becoming so accustomed to being in charge that I start to micromanage every aspect of my life. I’ve heard the same sentiment voiced by other self-employed friends. In a workplace, even the most introverted of us is forced to work with and around the needs of others. Working alone, we can often avoid that, and that inflexibility then creeps into the way we see the rest of our lives.
While being organized and reliable as a business owner is important, there has to be balance. The more we obsess about our plans playing out as we had imagined, the less we leave ourselves open to new things and to new people. When I travel (which is often), I plan my time as usual and don’t make any concessions to the struggle to find wifi and work in hotel rooms. To keep to my plan, I need to get back to my hotel after the conference day ends to make sure I can tick items off my to do list, get the planned things done. When a friend asks me to dinner, I can feel the panic of uncompleted tasks looming. I often decline, or I go but then spend the whole evening worrying about what will not get done.
By sticking to the plan I might have a clear to do list, but I lose the chance to spend time with my friends and peers making new connections and strengthening old ones. I’m king of a castle whose walls protect my plans and my world, but that world is shrinking.
There will always be times when, as a business owner, you will have to work incredibly and unreasonably hard in the short term. Being reliable is important, getting things done matters. However, the aim of self-employment for most of us was to free ourselves from the demands of a 9 to 5. We squander that freedom when we start to surround ourselves with rules and demands upon our own time. Worse, we squander the chances we have to make real and lasting connections with those around us.
I heard the quote at the top of this column from Yitzchok Willroth—the keynote speaker at a conference I am also speaking at. The quote speaks of the balance I want to regain. There are times when I and my business need me to look out for myself, to put my things first. However, the happiness that lies in being there for others matters too much to put off until later. This year, when I have turned forty, is as good a time as any to ask: if not now, when?
I, like many children, hated naps. I remember being put to bed after lunch, only to lie in bed and listen for the calming sound of my mother pouring coffee beans into the grinder, this the holy moment of her day when she was child-free and had a moment to herself. I was so attuned to the sound of those beans falling into the grinder that one time, when she poured some M&Ms into a glass bowl, I apparently shouted from my bedroom, "What are you eating?"
I was a precocious (obnoxious?) little thing. But all to say, that naps really weren't my thing. I always felt that time could have been better put to use.
Finally, Drummond had everything he’d ever dreamed of. He’d come a long way since he was a little boy, upset at his failure to get into the grammar school. That had been a great disappointment to his mother, and to his father, who was an engineer at a pharmaceutical company. His dad had never showed much interest in him as a child. He didn’t play with him and when he was naughty, he’d put him over the back of a chair and wallop him. That’s just the way men were in those days. Your father was feared and respected. Dads were dads.
itwbennett writes: A team of anonymous developers who recently created a Linux rootkit that runs on graphics cards has released a new proof-of-concept malware program that does the same on Windows. A Mac OS X implementation is also in the works. The problem the developers are trying to highlight lies not with the operating systems, such as Windows or Linux, nor with the GPU (graphics processor unit) vendors, but rather with existing security tools, which aren't designed to scan the random access memory used by GPUs for malware code.
Tourism isn’t the only industry eager to benefit from the relaxing of the decades-long trade embargo against Cuba. Medical researchers on both of sides of the Straits of Florida now have the chance to collaborate with previously off-limits colleagues. Of particular interest to the U.S. is a Cuban lung cancer drug that took 25 years to develop.
An anonymous reader writes: Open bank data will give us the freedom to access all banks in real time and from a single view, automatically calculating the best deals in complete transparency, which will be a significant step forward for social good and give people more control over their finances. Meanwhile, financial tech incubators, accelerators, and startups are creating a more experienced talent pool of developers ready to act upon these newly available assets. From the article: "The United Kingdom government has commissioned a study of the feasibility of UK banks giving customers the ability to share their transactional data with third parties via an open standard API. First mentioned alongside the autumn statement back in December, the chancellor has now outlined plans for a mandatory open banking API standard during the recent budget in March."
Groovey of Groovey.TV conducted an interview with Max Cavalera (SOULFLY, SEPULTURA, KILLER BE KILLED, CAVALERA CONSPIRACY) on April 29 in Denver, Colorado. You can now watch the chat below.
Speaking about SOULFLY's forthcoming album, "Archangel", which is tentatively due in August, Max said: "[It's a] really cool record. [It's] very exotic, mystic, really biblical. [It's] very, very heavy again. It's very influenced by the stuff I listen to right now — 1349 and BELPHEGOR, BEHEMOTH… I've been listening to a lot of death metal. Don't ask me why. I don't know why. I just fucking love the extremity of it. So, yeah, it's gonna be a really cool record. It's our tenth record. And I'm very excited for this album. And then I will tour for 'Archangel' probably for the next year and a half, two years, non-stop."
In a recent interview with Metal Wani, Max stated about "Archangel": "It's an interesting record. It's one of those [records] that come out once in a lifetime, an album like that comes out — really crazy sounds and very different dimensions. It's more experimental than the other stuff. It's still heavy as hell, and it's still fast. And Zyon's [Cavalera, Max's son] playing drums on it. He's actually playing really good. He reminds me of a young Dave Lombardo [SLAYER]. The fills that he's doing [are] really amazing; he surprised everybody in the studio. Matt Hyde is producing; he worked with SLAYER before. So it's really cool; a really good team."
Max also talked about the new SOULFLY song "We Sold Our Souls To Metal", which he previously described as a "metal anthem." Asked about the mindset that is required to write a track like that, Max said: "It just happens. You can't explain it. It's one of those things… [When] you play it, it has an instant reaction on the listener."
He continued: "I was very curious about that, so I was playing around with the song, playing it for people, to see what kind of reaction it gets. And almost everybody, the reaction was, like, 'This is so crazy. I can't wait 'till you guys play this live.' It's got this kind of New York hardcore chant that we do in the chorus — like, gang vocals. It's really, really fun, and everybody gets to sing together. That's why I was thinking that it's gonna become an anthem — the chorus, all the fans are gonna sing it together, and it's saying something. 'Cause, 'we sold our souls to metal,' I think every metalhead feels like that — that we did kind of a pact and we sold our souls for this music that we love so much. So it's something that I think [they'll] sing that with some kind of pride. I think it's gonna happen when that song comes out, at least. And then it ends [in a] very PINK FLOYD [-like way], which is really strange; I don't know why we did that. I still don't know if it was the right thing, but it came out like that. Marc [Rizzo] just did some really crazy guitars at the end of it that is just, like… It goes from total metal into crazy PINK FLOYD, but it works. I mean, it's really wild. And we like wild stuff. I always was drawn to weird, weird stuff, and that's definitely weird, in a good way."
Regarding the musical direction of the new SOULFLY material, Max told The Front Row Report: "Some of the stuff is really fast, actually; like the first couple of songs on the album are all fast. And then it eventually slows down and there's some kind of really heavy stuff. But I think it's a really strong album that I'm very proud of, and I think a lot of people are gonna like it."
SOULFY's ninth CD, "Savages", was released on October 1, 2013. The CD was produced by Terry Date, who is known for his work with such acts as PANTERA, DEFTONES and SOUNDGARDEN, among many others.
An audio snippet of "Skills In Pills", the title track of the new album from LINDEMANN, the new project featuring vocalist Till Lindemann of German industrial metallers RAMMSTEIN and Swedish producer and multi-instrumentalist Peter Tägtgren (HYPOCRISY, PAIN), can be streamed in the YouTube clip below.
"Skills In Pills" will be released on June 23 via Warner Bros.. The first single from the CD, "Praise Abort", will arrive on May 29.
"Skills In Pills" will be made available in the following formats:
* Standard Edition (2-panel digipack, 28-page booklet)
* Special Edition (Blu-ray-packaging, 28-page booklet, bonus track "That's My Heart")
* Super Deluxe Edition (large-size book, hardcover, 80 pages, telescope-carton, CD+bonus track "That's My Heart")
* Vinyl (gatefold sleeve, 28-page booklet, bonus track, includes album-download code)
* Digital
Speaking to U.K.'s Metal Hammer magazine, Tägtgren stated about how his collaboration with Lindemann came about: "It started around 1999 or 2000, after we got to know each other. Till was helping me put vocals on one of my albums, but it never happened because we were so busy all the time. But we kept in contact, and two summers ago, RAMMSTEIN were in Sweden and Till invited me over; we talked a bit before he went on stage, and he said that RAMMSTEIN were going to have a break for two years and we should do something."
He continued: "I was starting to think of doing another PAIN album, but as soon as Till came in, that's when I really started to work. I figured I'd just keep on writing. I started triggering his ideas and he started triggering mine. All of a sudden there was no PAIN album!"
Regarding the musical direction of LINDEMANN, Till told Metal Hammer: "It's a baby between RAMMSTEIN and PAIN — at least, it's a mix of RAMMSTEIN vocals and PAIN music.
"Peter's a real metalhead and I'm into this gothic thing.
"I know a lot of hardcore RAMMSTEIN fans may not like it, because they'll miss the German language and harsh sounds, but this is a side project and I bring a lot of personality into my half. There's a lot of different colors to this record."
Till added that there are plans for LINDEMANN to play some live shows and record a follow-up album, explaining that making the debut CD "was too much fun to just keep as a singular project."
"Skills In Pills" track listing:
01. Skills In Pills
02. Ladyboy
03. Fat
04. Fish On
05. Children Of The Sun
06. Home Sweet Home
07. Cowboy
08. Golden Shower
09. Yukon
10. Praise Abort
11. That's My Heart
Some people love celebrities, but others want to mess with them. Take a look at some of the most curious celebrity memes on the Internet.
With these 3D stickers, you can bring the beach to your kitchen or create vertigo inducing images for your bathroom. Check them out!
